Earlier this morning, in separate communiqués, the Sri Lankan Minister of Public Administration, Ranjith Maddumabandara, and the Sri Lankan Minister of Home Affairs, Vajira Abeywardena, have announced that the Sri Lankan Government had decided to once again declare Friday, April 15, 2016, as a non-working public holiday in Sri Lanka, presumably to link this year's, April 13-14, Sinhala and Tamil New Year, Sri Lankan Public holidays with the subsequent weekend of April 16 and 17, 2016.

The aforementioned announcements that Friday, April 15, 2016, had been declared as an additional one-off non-working public holiday in Sri Lanka, thus amends the official list of Sri Lankan public holidays, and Sri Lankan bank holidays, for the calendar year 2016 as announced and published in the "Gazette of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka", last spring (04-Aug-2015 and 29-May-2015).

In the past, April 15 has often been declared as a last-minute one-off non-working public holiday in Sri Lanka.

Two year ago (02-Apr-2014), the Sri Lankan Minister of Public Administration and Home Affairs had announced that the Sri Lankan Government had declared April 15, 2014, as a one-off public holiday throughout Sri Lanka, because "Sinhala and Tamil New year falls on April 13 and 14 which is a Sunday and Monday respectively".

The year before that (29-Mar-2013, 11-Jun-2012 and 16-Oct-2012), the Sri Lankan Government had similarly declared Monday, April 15, 2013, as a one-off public holiday throughout Sri Lanka because the 2 annual public holidays for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year both fell on a weekend in 2013.

Two years before that (06-Apr-2011), Sri Lanka's Ministry of Public Administration, in circumstances exactly similar to today's announcement, had also issued a circular today announcing that the government of Sri Lanka had decided to declare Friday, April 15, 2011, as a one-off special public and bank holiday, as was almost immediately confirmed by by Sri Lanka Banks' Association and the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE).